The goliath had managed to squeeze its way through the central locus easily enough, sticking one limb out at a time to allow itself more room to move. This, however, simply cracked through the heavens as it bore through the portal, forcefully making way for itself. Goliath had been massive, but this was unfathomable. A mountain of rounded stone and crystal, edges ablaze with a brilliant roiled flame. It was a meteor, but unlike any that Trenton had ever seen. It stretched for dozens of miles in every direction, encompassing the width of the city twice over, stretching further than Trenton could see in every direction.
For a moment, time almost seemed to stand still, the scene beneath the runic meteor crystalizing into perfect view. Sodrue hung in the air, badly beaten with dozens of purple crystals emerging from every part of his body, blotches of black space dotting the space around him. At once, Sodrue noticed both them and the meteor, wide eyes and panic visible even from this distance. He threw his left arm into the air, and his right towards them, dropping his blade to split his attention two ways.
-Zenith Cast: Supreme Fallow-
Gargantuan green chains burst from Sodrue’s body, shooting up into the air and winding around the body of the meteor in the blink of an eye. The meteor, before even having the chance to fully emerge, was stopped dead, perfectly frozen in time. However, therein, too, lied Sodrue’s folly. For as he split his attention between the meteor and the children, he neglected the true threat, the true target. Across from, standing calmly, purple crystalline sword hung loosely at his side. Although most of his physical features were nothing remarkable, short brown hair, lean, founded facial features, something else stood out to Trenton, an unshakable feeling within his core that hemorrhaged within his mind. This man looked like Garrote, not identical by any means, but remarkably similar.
In an instant, the man burst forward faster than Trenton could react, burrowing his blade deep into Sodrue’s gut and slamming his body back into the ground with enough force to form a substantial crater in the center of the clearing. He wound the blade around and around, twisting it into Sodrue’s gut, dredging an anguished cry from the man’s hoarse, swollen throat. He spoke to Sodrue, words lost on the wind, inaudible to any among them except children, who could feel the movement of the man’s lips, feel every syllable as if he were right there.
“I won’t ask again. Where. Is. He.” The man said, twisting the blade further with every word.
Sodrue was silent for a moment, both hands clutched at his abdomen, desperately trying to pull the sword from himself to no avail, “...go fuck yourself,” he choked, lopsided, bloody smile practically blinding.
“No matter the era, always the same,” The man said, pulling his sword from Sodrue’s gut and raising it high overhead.
However, at the same time, with everything he had left, as the meteor overhead continued its downward descent and the crystals on his body grew, Sodrue thrust his arms into the man’s torso, catching him by surprise. It was a gamble, a desperate one, but also all he had left. In an instant, Sodrue was gone, body vanishing into the air as if he never existed in the first place, the only proof that he’d even been there the three ticking, translucent clock hands, which sprouted from the man’s back as do flowers come spring.
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The man staggered a couple feet backwards, carefully slicing and prodding at the intangible hands protruding from his flesh. But no matter how he tried, they wouldn’t budge, continuing their incessant march towards the future without regard to the situation around them.
It happened so quickly. It was almost too hard to believe. Sodrue was dead, or at least close to it. Their friends were preoccupied or gone. In the distance, a familiar sound rang out betwixt the remaining buildings, bounding forward across the ruined plain, an avalanche to the ears getting closer, closer, closer by the second. It sounded like agony, the anguished screams of a thousand damned souls dredged from the deepest pits of the hells, a sound which reverberated with a smarting pitch. But at this moment, Trenton was too preoccupied to notice the noise–the pain–too stuck within the recesses of his own mind to realize what was happening.
Off to his left, Kiva pulled at his shoulder, screaming something he didn’t quite catch. To his right, Leo stumbled over a patch of uneven ground, struggling to bring himself back to his feet with the shaking of his arms. And within Trenton’s folds, Millie quivered, crying and humming a simple melody to herself. And yet, despite the chaos all around, despite how distracted and lost he was, Trenton didn’t hesitate, not even for a moment. It was as if he body moved on its own, millenia of experience he didn’t have flowing through his veins. He pivoted his momentum to his back heel, thrust Millie into Kiva’s arms, shifting the ground to his rights and left to send Kiva and Leo away from himself, and summoned before him the greatest rock wall he could muster, a grand bulwark some 50 feet high and 10 feet thick. And just as the wall extended up past Trenton’s head, he locked eyes with the man, yellow meeting purple–divine meeting secular.
Behind the wall, the man lazily raised his hand, flicking his forefinger towards Trenton, sending a wave of overwhelming presence towards Trenton. It slammed into his rock measly little rock wall, splitting it into thousands of fist sized rocks, and boring straight through. To Trenton, it felt as if he’d been struck by the hand of a god, an overwhelming, unyielding wall of force against his small, fragile body. Trenton flew across the torn landscape, slipping effortlessly between stone, building, and crystal as he tumbled, head over hell, through the air at hundreds of miles an hour.
When he landed, first on his right shoulder, it was ripped clean off, leaving a long trail of crimson blood in his wake. He bounced along the ground, rolling from his shoulder, to his back, to head, to his legs, massive chunks of flesh ripped out with every strike. The only thing that even kept him alive was the speed at which his presence flowed through his body, reinforcing the segments striking the ground many hundreds of times, minimizing the damage as much as possible.
Trenton slammed into an enormous purple crystal, instantly sundering his back in a hundred places, rupturing his liver, kidney, and heart, and bringing himself to an immediate stop. Behind him, from the cracks of the immense crater he’d left into the crystal, little specks, glinting in the moonlight, wafted through the air, settling in the pores of Trenton’s face, the tears in his skin, and the chambers of his barely functioning lungs. He could feel something growing from within him, feel the agony as his skin blistered and his vision faded, but he did not know what it was.
As Trenton faded from consciousness, from life, three things, somehow notable amidst all the chaos, stood out. Black and red eyes, a black and red blade, and the sound of scotched angels; a terrible rumbling from below which made warm Trenton’s heart in these final moments; and finally, the man, approaching him, some 30 feet off, his words piercing Trenton’s skull, striking a perfect harmony within his soul.
“I’ve been looking for you ever so long, waiting to teach you this lesson. It’s a shame I didn’t get the others, but I guess that seen to for me. All things fall to ruin Atlas–even you.”